VAL’SYN’AIRA HISTORICAL LORE
The Assembly of Three Voices: Of Stone, Blood, and Sky (A Summary)
The county of Val’syn’aira is based on the alliance of three bloodlines: the Braxtinr, Spiritalkers, and Sharizi. After the events that unfolded over the course of about twenty years, the remnants of the three lines, each under a new name came forth to form the Assembly of Three, Ti Tonas Samani.
The Spiritalkers and Sharizi were both nearly wiped out in the Battle of Ivie and the Razing of Sharizi. The Braxtinr, while not wiped out, reclaimed the first of their matriarchal line’s maiden names. The three lines are today known as the Thornns, Dreamwalkers, and Bokest, each representing one of the three elements within Val’syn’aira’s worldview: earth, water, and air, or stone, blood, and sky.
This is a brief overview of the unfolding of events.
The Assassinations
In the year 650, two individuals from noble lines in neighboring counties were assassinated. One was the son of the Count of Sharizi, Imreius Sharizi, who was poisoned; the other was the wife of the Count of Braxtinr, Belladonna Braxtinr, who had her throat slit. These assassinations were orchestrated as a coordinated effort planned for years by the Zilamtî Nazik leader, Belthere Nazik.
Belthere was an ambitious man, but one who did not have the love of followers to lead him towards building healthy unions to rule new lands. He had never been accepted in Tylsia because he was power hungry and vindictive. The only way he could achieve such feats as expansion was through subjugation and pillaging. While the Zilamtî Nazik were a large clan from just outside the territories of Tylsia, they would win no political favor.
Overtime, they were slowly encroaching upon the lands that were then known as Braxtinr and Sharizi, but they had little luck as any time they came fully into the lands of Tylsia, they were fought back. Before the assassinations, they had not made any official moves on the citizens of Tylsia, but they had been fighting with some of the unaffiliated nomads who roamed in unclaimed lands just beyond the borders. Many pop-up villages and wagons had been pillaged, the women raped or kidnapped, and some of the children enslaved; due to the nomads lack of resources and alliances, they had no one to turn to and some were even wiped out. This was how the Zilamtî Nazik opperated, and steadily their resources grew.
The decisive strike of the assassinations of Tylsian nobility so carefully planned could have caused a stir of dissension among the Sharizi and Braxtinr. There were indeed more plans to follow that would have cast both clans under heavy scrutiny. It did not, however. The Zilamtî Nazik could not possibly have known how even across vast distances, Belladonna and Imreius would instead meet in realms beyond and learn of the well laid plot.
Finding themselves spirit walking, Imreius and Belladonna were called by a mysterious chant and drawn to the same place. There, a flickering blue spirit fire burned before a man. This was Kataka Spiritalker, chieftan of the Spirtalker clan; he had lead one of the nomadic people targeted by the Zilamtî Nazik and fallen in battle. Now, he was waiting out the last of his soul energy in the Astral Plane in order to beg their aid.
During this fated meeting, Kataka informed the two assassinated nobles of the impending incursion of the Zilamtî Nazik. They had already struck at where the Spirittalkers were currently residing, forcing his daughter to grow with child some months past, and continuing to slaughter his people. They were now moving inward to strike at Sharizi and Braxtinr, though it would still take some time to finish taking the lands from the unaffiliated clans. With urgency, Kataka explained that the Zilamtî Nazik had killed a great number of Spirittalkers, not all who could spirit walk, and their numbers were now dwindling.
Kataka urged Imreius and Belladonna to come protect his pregnant daughter Tah'ah'la Hanna. Now that he was to die for good, she would become the leader of the Spiritalkers. She also possessed the knowledge of where the Spirittalkers kept their prized cultural treasure, the Sacred Heart, or the Ah’syn. It was the last of their legacy, and without their help, the Heart would be buried and lost in the history of Elyria.
The Battle of Ivie
With Kataka’s help, Belladonna and Imreius managed to find their way back to their bodies. After awakening, they discovered how they had been assassinated and each took action to ensure it would not happen again. Imreius had his assassin thrown into the darkest prison possible, while Belladonna promptly beheaded her husband and had the body burned. In haste, both Sharizi and Braxtinr set out with troops to support the Spirittalkers, a journey which without much rest still took nearly three days. Unfortunately, there was no time to rally many of the other Tylsian troops although runners were sent to carry along the message.
After a bloody battle at the Valley of Ivie, the trio of clans were ultimately victorious, managing not only to slaughter the present forces of the Zilamtî Nazik, but also to retrieve the Sacred Heart. Thus, the triad of Thornns, Sharizi, and Spirittalkers sealed their alliance. Days later, reinforcements from the rest of Tylsia joined the Braxtinr and Sharizi forces in decisively ending any future threat from the Zilamtî Nazik, offering any refugees of the subjugation a new home.
Following a grand celebration, each of the three parted ways. Belladonna returned to her home and claimed her rightful place as Countess since she had beheaded her husband for attempting to assassinate her. In this peaceful takeover, she reclaimed her maiden name of Thornn. She gifted the Spirittalkers a sizeable plot of land. Imreius returned to Sharizi while Tah’ah’la and her soon to be born daughter settled with the remaining Spiritalkers in the gifted land on outskirts of Braxtinr. Although Imreius had returned to his home, he continued to see Tah’ah’la after she gave birth to her bastard son, Tak’lenen.
Fall of the Sharizi
Tah’ah’la and Imreius had grown quickly to love each other fiercely, but despite his culture’s emphasis on marriage never being arranged and only created out of love, his father destroyed that sacred law by agreeing to marry Imreius to a foreign dignitary.
Within the following thirteen years after the Battle of Ivie, Imreius’s beloved culture crumpled and was destroyed slowly starting with the betrothal. Another deceitful clan, the Balûle, posed at a political bond. The Balûle suggested a marriage between Imreius and their Count’s daughter, Valluial, in order to assure an alliance. Between the military might of the Balûle and the more mystical culture of the Sharizi, Imreius’s father, Count Sercius, saw it as an opportunity to stave off bloodshed after the most recent battle. Imreius did not understand this choice and fought back, but in the end he was forced to wed.
Just before the wedding, Imreius saw Tah’al’lah a final time. In this meeting, he got her with child. Their daughter, who Imreius would not meet until years later, was Dal'ah'nah. This was the last they would see each other until Tah’ah’lah’s death.
As it would turn out, the Balûle merely used the marriage to gain leverage against the Sharizi. During the festivities of Imreius and Valluial’s son Sutorius’s first birthday, the Balûle struck and razed the Sharizi estate to the ground.
Tah’ah’la, in her attempts to forewarn and save Imreius, was killed as he fled to Braxtinr. Still in the process of being reformed after Belladonna’s rise to Countess, Braxtinr was nevertheless a military powerhouse with their feared shield maidens which would one day be known as the Val’kyryn. Combining Belladonna’s aid along with help from the allies of Tylsia, they struck the Balûle down. Unfortunately, it was too late for the Sharizi, their extensive libraries, and the entire bloodline save for Imreius, his son, and the daughter he did not know.
The Formation of Val’syn’aira
Heartbroken and alone except for his son and serva, Cassius, Imreius made it safely to Braxtinr. Worn and bitter in his wretchedness at the lost of Tah’ah’lah, Imreius did not fight in the battle to reclaim the lands of Sharizi nor was he asked to as the only remaining noble - the rest of the bodies had been burned, drowned, and beheaded.
In the following years, Imreius, as the rightful heir to the County of Sharizi, merged his reclaimed lands with Belladonna’s. This formed Val’syn’aira - a name symbolic of the alliance and the Union of Three which would be carried out for generations to come. Val, meaning Stone, honored the Thornn line which represented strength and protection. Syn, meaning Blood, honored the Spirittalker line which represented not only the cultural Sacred Heart or Ah’syn, but the depth of emotion with which Tah’ah’lah and Kataka had sacrificed themselves for the ones they loved. Finally, Aira, meaning sky, honored the line of Sharizi which represented vast knowledge of things both in the physical plane and beyond though their rich mysticism and vast libraries, even if almost all had been lost. Over the years since it's formation, the vast lands now under the Thornn line were split off into other Counties. Thus Val'Aira duchy was born.
The Bloodlines in the Aftermath
The Spirittalkers & Sharizi
After coming to the capital, Imreius was united with his daughter Dal’ah’nah and raised her alongside Sutorius. He changed his surname to Bokest, meaning “broken” and abandoned the Sharizi name for he felt it had abandoned his culture and knowledge. Imreius died alone and of old age in a distant cottage, surrounded by books of all the knowledge he and his serva Cassius had managed to record from memories.
Dal’ah’nah Bokest would go on to become one of the Val’kyryn, a new order of warriors that protected the lands of the county. She was trained by Trella, Belladonna’s daughter.
Dal’ah’nah married a Thornn lad and went on to have several children who would help further the strong warrior line.
Sutorius Bokest lived out a life in the city, marrying a Thornn woman and fathering a son named Sutorius II. Sutorius II was given a plot of land to build a town and with his wife Rinae created Ah’wena.
Tak’lenen Spirittalker, Tah’ah’la’s oldest child and illegitimate son, remained with the Spirtalker people even after her death. It was through his strength that the remaining nomadic people rallied under a new vision and began to repopulate. Overtime and several generations later, their people would take on a new name - the Dreamwalkers.
The Thornns
Being the first of her line when reclaiming her maiden name, Belladonna made a vow to both herself and the women descended from her. No Thornn would again suffer at the whims of a mann, for they were more than the sum of their parts. The line has remained strong and unyielding, now adapting a matriarchy and ruling over the combined land's with respect and dignity. The Thornn line continues to hold the title of Countess & Duchess to this day, absorbing both the Bokest & Spirittalker's into the family through generations of marriage.
